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Backup Your Computer to Amazon S3 With Cloudberry

By Matthew Guay on August 25, 2010 in PC Software, Techinch

Would you like to backup your computer to make sure your data is always available no matter what happens? There are many ways to backup your computer, but the only way to make sure your data won’t get lost or destroyed is to store it in the cloud. Cloudberry makes it easy to backup your whole computer to a variety of online storage services, so let’s see how you can use it to backup your computer to Amazon S3.

Cloudberry Backup is a great application that makes backing up your data online as easy as backing it up to a DVD or external hard drive. We’ve previous covered how you can use Cloudberry to Backup Your Data to Windows Azure. We’re now going to look at backing up your computer to Amazon S3, which previously required a different version of Cloudberry Backup. The new 1.7 update, however, added all the backup options to all versions of Cloudberry backup, so you won’t have to worry about which version to buy. If you’re just getting started, you can get this version today, or if you’ve already purchased Cloudberry, you’ll have access to the new features for free once you’ve updated.

Setting Up Cloudberry Backup

Of course you’ll first need to install Cloudberry backup on your computer. Once you’ve purchased it or downloaded a trial, install it as normal.

Then, when you first run it, enter your email address and license key, and click Activate. Alternately, if you’re installing it as a trial, click Request Trial at the bottom instead of entering your license key.

After a few moments, you’ll be notified that your copy of Cloudberry is activated. Click Ok to get started.

You’ll be greeted with the launch screen as it loads. Note that now it doesn’t say what storage service it’s designed for, as the new 1.7 version includes support for all of the available storage options.

Now you’ll see the Cloudberry interface, where you can start your backup and keep your data secure.

Start Your Backup on Amazon S3

Now you can start backing up your computer online. Click Setup Backup Plan to get started.

Click Next to start setting up your backup plan.

Select the backup plan you’d like to use. Advanced Mode offers many special Cloudberry features, such as backing up files larger than 5Gb, resuming failed uploads, and encrypting data. The Simple mode, on the other hand, offers less features, but you may find it preferable since you can access your files on S3 with any S3 tools.

Once you’ve chosen the plan you want, select the Cloud Storage service you’d like to use. We’re selecting Amazon S3 in this test, but again, you can now use the same version to backup to Azure and several other services as well. Select Create a new account if you haven’t added your Cloud Storage info to Cloudberry yet.

For you S3 account, you’ll need to enter your Display name, Access key, and Secret key. If you don’t know where to find this info, or still need to setup your Amazon S3 account, checkout our article about How to Setup Your Amazon S3 Account.

Now, select the files and folders you’d like to backup. Most of the files you’ll want to backup will be in your Users folder, though feel free to select any folder that’s mission-critical for you!

You can then select to backup all the files in the folders, or to skip certain files. If you already have an existing backup and only want to backup new files, the new 1.7 version now lets you choose to only backup files created after a certain time.

Next you can choose to compress your files to save storage space, and if you chose Advanced mode previously, you can choose to encrypt your files as well. You can also select to use Reduced Redundancy Storage on Amazon S3 from this page. This lets you store files for only $0.10/Gb/month, versus the standard $0.15/Gb/month, though your files will not be stored as redundantly on S3. This is generally a fine option for standard personal backups, and I personally use it.

The next page is one of the most interesting. You can choose to keep multiple versions of files so you can access previous versions and revert changes, and you can also select to have files that were deleted locally deleted online after a certain amount of time. This is a new option to the 1.7 version, and is a great help at keeping your backups manageable while still letting you recover accidently changed or deleted files.

Now choose the schedule you want your backup to run on, and you can specify the time down to the minute. This is another new feature in the 1.7 version, and it’s very nice to be able to plan your online backups this much.

Cloudberry can automatically send you an email when you backups are complete or fail. Enter your info if you’d like to activate this feature.

You’re almost finished now. Enter a name for your backup plan, and click Next.

CloudBerry will now present you with an overview of your backup plan. If everything looks correct, click Next to finish.

You’ll now see your new Backup plan listed under the Backup Plans tab. Click Run Backup Now to start backing up your data immediately.

You’ll be able to see CloudBerry’s progress as it uploads and backups your files to Amazon S3 or other cloud storage accounts you may have chosen. You can pause or stop backups as well if you realize something is wrong. Do note that uploading your entire backup may take a fair amount of time, especially if you have a lot of data on your computer. It may be a good idea to start your backup at night or another time you don’t need your computer, and let it run unattended as it will take several hours to upload the files.

You can also follow the backup progress from your taskbar. Simply hover over the CloudBerry icon to see how the backup is going.

Once your files are backed up, you can browse them from the Backup Storage tab. Here you can see each individual file and folder stored in your Amazon S3 account.

If you realize later you don’t need some of the files on your backup, simply select them, right-click and select Delete Selected Items so they’ll stop taking up space in your online storage. You can also restore individual files this way, so if you accidently delete a file you can always quickly restore it.

For the most part though, you shouldn’t need to worry too much about your data taking up too much space. Amazon S3 storage costs $0.15/Gb/month, and an equal amount for uploading and downloading data. And, if you chose the reduced redundancy option, you’ll only pay $0.10/Gb/month for data storage. This means you’ll spend the most the first month, but after that you’ll likely spend at most a couple dollars a month on S3. You can store 20Gb for $2/month on the reduced redundancy plan, or $3/month on the standard plan. Not too bad, considering you’ll be almost absolutely certain you’ll never lose your backups!

Conclusion

No matter how wired your home and office are, today most of us keep some of our most valuable documents and memories in digital form. There’s no reason to risk your computer dying and losing all of your important files; with cloud computing, you can make sure you can still get your important files even if you lost all of your backup files since you can never lose the cloud. CloudBerry makes it affordable and simple to get started backing up your files online. Amazon S3 generally works out the cheapest right now, but Windows Azure is very similarly priced and is easy to setup for backup as well. Now you can backup to either service you want, or even both, from the same version of CloudBerry, so you don’t have to worry about making the wrong choice. The only wrong choice now is to not backup your files!

CloudBerry Backup costs $29.99, and updates are free, so if you’ve already purchased CloudBerry you’ll be able to get the latest 1.7 version absolutely for free! Amazon S3 and Azure are both free to setup, and will only cost once you have data stored in them.

Purchase CloudBerry Backup And Start Backing Up Your Computer Online Today

Backup Your Files to Windows Azure With CloudBerry

By Matthew Guay on June 15, 2010 in PC Software, Techinch

Cloud computing has taken the world by storm. From the newly released Microsoft Office Web Apps and the popular Google Apps to collaboration tools such as Dropbox and Backpack from 37signals, more and more of us are using online applications and storing more data in the “cloud” every day. But with our data scattered around between various services, we still keep large amounts of data on our computers. Favorite mp3s, irreplaceable pictures, and critical documents are often left on our computers, venerable to hard drive crashes and theft. Most backup media, including DVDs and external hard drives, are susceptible to the same problems.

Cloud computing offers an ideal solution to this. Cloud computing, boiled down to its essence, is simply using computer resources on servers via the internet. And today there are many tools that can help you take advantage of cloud computing to backup your computer. Microsoft has recently released a new cloud computing platform, Windows Azure, that lets you run applications and store your data on their servers. No matter what happens to your computer, anything you store on Azure will still be accessible from any computer.

Using services like Azure can seem confusing, especially if you’re not a geek. Today, however, anyone can easily use Windows Azure to backup their computers quickly and easily with the brand-new CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Azure. This simple to use application lets you backup your computer intuitively, just like many other backup programs you may have used. But while most backup programs help you save your files to DVDs or an external drive, CloudBerry for Windows Azure backs up your files to Windows Azure, so you can always access your backups wherever you are. And, best of all, for a limited time, you can use both CloudBerry for Windows Azure and the Windows Azure service for free! Keep reading to see how easy it is to keep your data backed up … in the Windows Azure cloud.

Getting Started

First you’ll need to have a Windows Azure account. If you don’t already have an account, check out our article on how to Setup Your Windows Azure Account. And, remember, until July 31, 2010, you can store up to 500Mb for free.

Now you’re ready to start using CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Azure. Download it from the link below, and install as usual. CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Azure is free with registration during the beta period, so if you install it now you’ll get to keep it for free. If you’re getting started with CloudBerry after the beta period is over, you can run the free trial for 14 days and then purchase a full version for $29.99.

Once it’s installed, run the program to get started backing up your computer. During the free beta period, enter your name and email to get a free registration key. Enter the key you receive in an email, and then click Ok.

If you’re getting started with CloudBerry after the free beta period, you can click Request Trial to activate a 14 day trial, or click Buy to purchase a license key. Once you have your key, enter it in the box and click Activate.

Now you’re all set … Welcome to CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Azure!

Setup an Online Backup

Now you’re ready to start backing up your files online to Windows Azure. Click Setup Backup Plan in the CloudBerry main window.

It’s fairly easy to setup your backup, but we’ll step through the wizard together so you’ll know what to expect.

First choose if you want Advanced or Simple mode. Advanced mode is selected by default, but we chose Simple mode so we can access our files with any Azure Blob tool including ClourBerry’s free Explorer for Azure.

Since this is our first backup to setup, we’ll need to create a new account.

Enter your Azure account information. Notice that your Account name is the same as the first part of your Display name’s address. Now click the Container button, and select Create New Container.

Enter a name for your container, and choose if you want this container to be open for public access. For most backups, you’ll want to choose No public read access, but if you’re backing up files you want to link to on your blog or website, you could choose public access. Click Ok when you’re done, and then click Ok in the previous dialog.

Now, choose the files and/or folders you wish to backup. You can backup whole top-level folders such as your User folder, or you can simply choose the folders and files you want backed up online.

Choose if you want to backup all of the files in the folders, or if you want to not backup certain files such as system and hidden files. You can then choose to compress the files to save space, and choose whether you want to save older versions of changed files. This is a great option to help you save only the most important files and scale the amount of storage used on Azure to the level that works best for you.

Finally, set the schedule you want to use for your backup. You can choose to only run it manually, or set it to automatically run. And, you can even choose to have CloudBerry email you a status report when it runs the backup.

We can now run our backup. In our test, the files uploaded to Azure very quickly, though it still may take quite a while depending on your internet upload speed and the number and size of files you’re backing up.

You can also now activate preset backup plans, such as the very useful My Internet Bookmarks backup plan. Simply select the plan, and click Run backup now. You may have to configure a few settings, but with only a couple clicks we were able to have our Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome bookmarks backed up to our Azure storage.

Note: The Internet Bookmarks backup plan only worked when running CloudBerry in Administrative Mode in Windows 7. This is a bug that is planned to be fixed in an upcoming update.

Once your files are backed up, you can browse them in Azure and restore them quickly via the Backup Storage tab.

Now your Welcome Page will show your backup plans, total space used on Azure, settings, and more. You can also now restore files from your backup directly from the Welcome Page.

And you’ll always be sure to have the latest version of CloudBerry Backup installed, since it will automatically check for updates on startup when you’re online. If a newer version of CloudBerry Backup is available, click Download and install the update. The update installer may be the same as the original installer, but don’t be worried, you backup settings will still be kept the same after it’s installed.

Price

As mentioned before, both Cloudberry for Windows Azure and the Windows Azure service are free for a limited time. And, the great thing is, if you start using Cloudberry backup now, you’ll get to keep using the program for free, even when the free beta period is over. If you didn’t get in on the free beta, Cloudberry Backup is reasonably priced at $29.99 per copy.

Windows Azure additionally is free for up to 500Mb of storage until July 31, 2010. Any data over that amount, and all data after that date, will cost $0.15 per gigabyte per month. Plus, it will cost $0.10 per gigabyte of data transferred to Windows Azure. Still, for most users, this works out to a fairly reasonable amount. Say you want to backup 15Gb of pictures and 5Gb of documents with Windows Azure starting on August 1, 2010, and you upload 1Gb worth of changes per month. Here’s what the backup would cost you between now and the end of the year:

August $5.00 Initial Backup + storage

September $3.10 Storage + backup updates

October $3.10 -

November $3.10 -

December $3.10 -

Total: $17.40

This works out very reasonably, especially when you consider that your files are being backed up redundantly in Azure servers around the world, so you’re certain to be able to recover your files no matter what happens.

Conclusion

CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Azure is a great tool to help you keep your files backed up online. It worked very good in our tests, and we were very impressed with the upload speeds to the Windows Azure server. Setup is still somewhat confusing right now, partly due to Azure setup, but we hope this will be streamlined in future versions. Additionally, we’d like to see CloudBerry’s S3 and Azure backup programs merged so we could manager backups on both services simultaneously. Still, if you’d like to get started backing up your files on the Azure cloud, there’s no better time to get started than now since you can get started now for free! So give it a try, and let us know how backing up your computer in the Azure cloud works for you!

And, if you’re curious about CloudBerry’s other tools such as Explorer for Azure and Backup for Amazon S3 work, check back soon for reviews of these products as well!

Setup Your Windows Azure Account

By Matthew Guay on June 14, 2010 in Techinch

Are you ready to get started with cloud computing? Whether you’re a developer wanting to tab cloud resources for your application or are simply a home user wanting to backup your files securely online, Windows Azure is a great cloud computing service from Microsoft that can meet your needs no matter how large or small. You can use as little or much storage or computing power as you need, and be certain that your projects and files will always be available worldwide. And although signing up for Azure is slightly difficult, once you have an account it is very easy to add storage and computing services and start using them with your applications.

In this example, we’re signing up for Windows Azure and setting up a Blob storage account for online backup with CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Azure, but these steps are the same you’d use to signup and use any Windows Azure service.

Getting Started

Head to the Windows Azure website (link below), and click the Sign up now button. Select the account you want. Until July 31, 2010, you can choose the Introductory Special which gives you 500Mb of storage for free. Otherwise, choose the Pay as you Go plan.

Login with your Windows Live ID, and enter your profile information including your name, address and email. You may be asked for business information, but if you’re using Azure for your personal backup just enter your name or perhaps your personal website’s name.

Now, check the box to accept the rate plan and agreement, and click Checkout.

Enter your payment information as normal. Note that you’ll need to enter credit card information even if you’re signing up for the free introductory offer.

Finally, enter Administrator details for your Azure account, and confirm that all of your information is correct.

Once everything entered, you’ll need to wait for your service to be activated. Our account was activated in under an hour, but this may take up to 24 hours. You’ll also receive an email with details about your service and how to login to the various components.

Activate Your Azure Blog Storage

As mentioned above, we setup this Azure account to use for online backup with CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Azure, so we want to setup a storage service. The steps are similar, however, for activating any of the other Azure services.

Login to your Azure dashboard at https://windows.azure.com/ using your Windows Live ID. Click your account name in the dashboard, and then click the New Service link on the top right.

Click Storage Account to start setting up your account for backup.

Enter a name for your service, and a description if you wish. If you plan to have multiple storage services in your Azure account, make sure to give it a unique name so you can easily identify it.

Now, enter a unique public name for your storage account. Don’t worry; only the files you expressly mark as public will be accessible to others, so in reality if you’re setting up this account for your own backups, you’ll be the only one to see and use this address.

Also, select a region near you where you wish for your files to be stored. Your Azure files will be redundantly stored in multiple server locations, but this will let you choose a server near you for your primary storage so it will be the fastest to access. Finally, click Create when everything’s ready to go.

Azure may take a few moments to create your new service…

…and then you’ll be presented with your account info. You’ll have endpoint addresses to access your storage, and access keys to access it via programs.

And, now when you sign in to your Azure account, you’ll see your service along with links to start new services.

But this is just the beginning … now you can use your online computing and storage at Azure to create great applications, deliver content across the world, and even backup your personal documents, pictures, and more with tools like CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Azure.

Conclusion

Windows Azure is one of the most exciting projects to come from Microsoft recently, as it points to the future of dynamically accessible and allocable computing resources in the cloud. Although it may not seem as interesting as Office 2010, Windows 7, or the upcoming Windows Phone 7, expect to see Azure and related services increasingly used to deliver services and applications across the web. And you can harness this power today, and even get started for free until July 31, 2010.

Links

Signup for Windows Azure

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Backup Your Computer to Amazon S3 With Cloudberry

Setting Up Cloudberry Backup

Start Your Backup on Amazon S3

Conclusion

Purchase CloudBerry Backup And Start Backing Up Your Computer Online Today

More Links

Backup Your Files to Windows Azure With CloudBerry

Getting Started

Setup an Online Backup

Price

Conclusion

Links

Purchase CloudBerry Backup

Setup Your Windows Azure Account

Getting Started

Activate Your Azure Blog Storage

Conclusion

Links

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